re rendering and all that jazz

when building my scenes, i realized that i have alot more to work on. aside from the fact that i still have to build my scenes, i also had to re render the bits and pieces that needed my attention.

one of the major things that i had to re render was the scene where the robot is travelling on top view. i had to render it out because of a strange thing that it does with the lip of the sink. it doesn't seem to catch any shadow at all and it has a "skipped" effect on the final render.

what i did to get around it in the first hand was to remove the problem area entirely. obviously it didn't work and for some strange reason, it left me with a strange white mask.

so i went back in and recreated the basin. it worked for a little bit. but, since i created it, i cant unsee it everytime i play around with it on post.

will blog about it soon

trish x

reflection pass and other things that almost drove me to insanity.

as suggested by the title, i had to make the reflection pass for my assignment and it did almost drove me to insanity because i wasn't too sure on how to make it. but with the help of my supah awesome friend Andrew (Hi Andrew) i was able to understand it in a simpler way possible.

the idea of the reflection pass is to render out subtle reflections on the surface where the model stands. take this one scene as an example. we see here bobbie casting a shadow on the wall but at the same time casting his reflection on the floor. the reflection here is a bit too strong though but forgive me, its my first time having a ball at this.

the reason why i need a reflection pass is because the surface of my scene is quite shiny and it needs that subtle reflection to sell it more.

now to the important bit: adding the actual reflection pass. it was pretty easy once i learned how. it was just a matter of copying all of the exsisting elements from the scene and pasting them in the new scene with the label "reflection_pass". next is to tweak with the surface shaders and override the reflection limit (right click-over ride command) and just mucking around with the mental ray settings.

when you are rendering this, just go to passes, then click on the button that says create new and select reflection passes. dont forget to tick the claptrap on the bottom of the first screen to enable this on your layer.

and yes, approximate time of waiting for this to render is about an hour tops. which was good cause the whole time i was waiting for it, i had a good snooze to just get myself psyched up again.


 and here is what it looks like for the meantime:

it definitely needs to be re rendered with the shadows though. for some reason, the shadow pass didn't render out properly. but im happy with this outcome.

overall, i've finished with all of my scenes. just alot of tweaking to do and lots of colour grading/matching and sound effects. i plan on finishing this assignment early on so i can just fix bugs and all that before submission date. hopefully, i can get alot of stuff done for my assignment over the week im away for adelaide that way theres much less hassel to do for everything else.

whoo, final 3 weeks to go. i really cant see myself finishing just yet. ;)

more soon. til next time :)

trish! x

feedback session

it took me a few days to realize that i have not been updating this properly but instead writing down everything in my notebook. i really should get with the program and start writing down everything that happens in class in this blog instead :)

so anyway, i finally showed jarrad what i had done for the class and as it turns out i need to do more for this assignment that i thought. here are just some of the recaps i did for this project.

feedback:

sink top view: fix the shadows. it doesn't bounce properly on to the sink so the shadows don't seem natural. try to dip in the sink.
on close up shot: rotation of the robot isn't parallel to the floor.

general feedback;
-shadows need to be darker
-scenes 1 and 2: character is too crisp, add a motion blur to make it blend more with the background (do it in post). another suggestion was to add a Z depth pass which will slightly blur out the edges of the character.
-add  reflection pass so the floor would catch a glimpse of the character passing by.
-colour matching and motion blur

my personal feedback:
-arm flex need to be worked on more. (probably redo the IK handles so it will the same as the character)
-create a pipe wrench for a finishing touch.

there is honestly alot more to do in this assignment. will blog more about it  as soon as i get it working!

more sson!
trish x